Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas and renewed its air and ground war over a month ago. It has sealed off Gaza's 2 million Palestinians from all food and other imports since the beginning of March to pressure Hamas to release hostages. Around two dozen hostages are still believed to be alive.
Here's the latest:
An Israeli soldier is killed in Gaza
A tank driver was killed and another soldier severely wounded during combat in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the Israeli military said.
The soldiers' families have been notified but their names have not been released, the brief military statement said, which did not specify how the soldier was killed.
More than 400 Israeli soldiers have died in ground operations in Gaza, according to official figures, which do not include soldiers killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
Clashes on Lebanon-Syria border
Smugglers are active along the two countries' border and clashes like the ones on Thursday are not uncommon.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency says an explosive drone blew up in a border village in Lebanon wounding eight Syrian refugees. NNA said the Lebanese army sent reinforcements to the border area after shooting was heard. It gave no further details.
Later Thursday, Syria’s state news agency SANA quoted an unnamed defense ministry official as saying that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group fired five shells toward army positions on the Syrian side of the border and that troops retaliated.
Lebanon and Syria signed an agreement last month on border demarcation and increasing their security coordination.
Palestinians create role for a vice president and possible successor to aging leader Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the West Bank
The Palestine Liberation Organization's decision Thursday came as Abbas seeks greater relevance and a role in postwar planning for the Gaza Strip after having been largely sidelined by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The expectation is that whoever holds that role would be the front-runner to succeed Abbas — though it’s unclear when or exactly how it would be filled. Abbas is to choose his vice president from among the other 15 members of the PLO’s executive committee.
The PLO is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people and oversees the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited autonomy in less than half of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abbas has led both entities for two decades.
Hamas, which won the last national elections in 2006, is not in the PLO. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’ forces in 2007, and reconciliation attempts between the rivals have repeatedly failed.
Israeli military chief threatens to expand operations in Gaza
While visiting Israeli forces deployed in southern Gaza, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, “If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages, we will expand our activity into a more intense and significant operation.”
The military chief of staff’s statement Thursday said Hamas is “responsible for starting this war” and for the “dire situation of the population in Gaza.”
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 captives, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.
Since Israel resumed the war in March, its forces have taken over more than half of Gaza and heavy airstrikes have killed nearly 2,000 people.
Israeli military admits responsibility for killing a UN staffer from Romania last month
The military initially denied it was responsible for the March 19 strike on a U.N. guesthouse in Gaza, which also wounded five other U.N. employees. Afterward, the U.N. concluded that an Israeli tank had struck the compound and said it had informed the military a day earlier that the location was a U.N facility.
Releasing its initial findings on Wednesday, the military said one of its tanks targeted the building “due to assessed enemy presence” and that the structure “was not identified by the forces as a U.N. facility” at the time. The attack prompted the United Nations to reduce its presence in the Gaza Strip, citing safety concerns.
Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day
A somber siren wailed across the country for two minutes of silence at 10 am Thursday. Cars stopped along the highway and people paused in their daily errands as they stood in silence.
Yom Hashoah, the day Israel observes as a memorial for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust, is one of the most solemn dates on the country’s calendar.
Official observances began after sundown on Wednesday with a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. At the ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as “the main lesson of the Holocaust."
“On this Holocaust Day, I promise: The military pressure on Hamas will continue. We will destroy all its capabilities. We will return all our hostages. We will defeat Hamas, and we will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said.
Israel’s president Isaac Herzog is in Poland for the annual March of the Living in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. He was joined by some 80 Holocaust survivors and 10 survivors of Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Far-right Israeli minister is booed at Yale
Protesters booed and threw water bottles at Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was invited to speak at Yale University
The minister, who has been convicted eight times for offenses including racism and supporting a terrorist organization, is in America on a week-long trip to meet with politicians, business leaders, and the Jewish community in the U.S.
According to the Yale student newspaper, Ben-Gvir was invited to speak with a Jewish group that is not formally affiliated with the university.
Ben-Gvir said he spoke to students and professors about the lessons of the Holocaust in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which Israel marks from Wednesday evening to Thursday. "The antisemitic rioters will not intimidate me. I am continuing my important journey in the United States," he said.
Ben-Gvir oversees the country's police force and has encouraged Netanyahu to press ahead with the war in Gaza and stop all humanitarian aid.
At least 50 killed as Israel pounds Gaza
Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 50 people, many of them women and children, according to the territory's Health Ministry.
A series of strikes hit in the northern Jabaliya area. One killed nine people in a police station. The Israeli military said it targeted a command and control center for Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group. Other strikes in the area killed 18 people in a house and two people in a tent, the Health Ministry said. It did not immediately have details on the identities of the dead.
At least seven people were killed, including a mother and her two children, and another two children, in three strikes on the southern city of Khan Younis. Strikes in central Gaza killed six people, including two women and two children.
An airstrike on a home in Gaza City killed four children and their parents, and a later hit on an apartment building killed 11 people, including at least one child, the Health Ministry said.
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